Re: [Rails] Locusts in Africa

[Hassan Schroeder]

On Fri, Feb 14, 2020 at 10:30 PM David Hughes
 wrote:

> I pay a team in India to do this.

:-(

> Now in recent weeks Ruby experts at Penn State have looked at our code and it 
> is very bad!

I've been dropped into this situation and I'll bet money that there is
virtually nothing salvageable from that code.

> We could have thousands of coders like you.

OMG no. You do *not* need "thousands of coders", you need one or
two senior devs to triage your current mess and choose the best way
forward (which might be a complete rewrite).

Open sourcing the code either as-is or as a new app still requires some
technical leadership to define requirements (and set expectations) and
experienced eyes reviewing PRs -- it's not magic.

-- 
Hassan Schroeder  hassan.schroe...@gmail.com
twitter: @hassan
Consulting Availability : Silicon Valley or remote

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Re: [Rails] Locusts in Africa

[Hasan Diwan]

David,

> On Sat, 15 Feb 2020 at 06:30, David Hughes 
> wrote:
>
>> I am a scientist at Penn State and the United Nations. We have a Platform
>> called PlantVillage that is a public good with a backend built on RoR with
>> various apps farmers use around the world to get help. The reason these
>> farmers (e.g. in Kenya) would use the tool is that they dont have access to
>> human experts who can help them know the problems in their field
>> (pests/climate change stress). You can read our blogs here
>> https://plantvillage.psu.edu/blogposts
>> I wrote back in 2018 to this group to ask about getting your help. Many
>> of you were very keen on helping. THANKS!!
>> I didnt follow up as I am not a coder. I pay a team in India to do this.
>> So, it was just easier to keep with them. I didnt even know where to start
>> in sharing the code on GitHub.
>> Now in recent weeks Ruby experts at Penn State (who built ScholarSphere
>> https://github.com/psu-stewardship/scholarsphere) have looked at our
>> code and it is very bad! Rubocop showing errors off the charts and no
>> tests/commit.
>>
>
I'll take a look at it if you don't mind.

> It needs your help and we are actively trying to make sure we dont have
>> any privacy issues so we can open source it.
>> I am reaching out now as we have an extremely urgent situation though.
>> You may have seen the news about Locust swarms in East Africa? They are the
>> worse in 75 years
>> According to the UN, 19 million people are in immediate danger. They are
>> at Level 3 (crisis). Since we can expect hotter, drier weather in some
>> affected regions in the coming months (low crop outcome) the addition of
>> locusts in potentially a famine.
>> Here is an article today https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-51501832 The
>> video is informative
>> They are mostly in Kenya where control is possible. But we need lots of
>> people out there with phone use our app and reporting sitings. Currently,
>> they use WhatsApp but since that is private we cannot get the GPS
>> coordinates of the locations.
>> The Indian team I employ built an app. But I am sure it has problems and
>> if we have thousands of users it could fail.
>> Here is the apk file of the app
>> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nAvTolDEz48mPLtIPO6abumW6KQAM-00/view?usp=sharing
>> It is super simple: It must do two things
>> 1) Allow users to upload images/videos from which United Nations Staff
>> can determine the location and stage of locust swarms
>> 2) Enable app users to have a free-ranging chat function. There should be
>> two chat channels: general (any users of apps) and admin (just select).
>> One of the problems we have is the code base for the locust app is tied
>> to the rest of out platform and apps. So, there are security issues if user
>> names and passwords etc.
>> Your coding skills could save lives here: that is not an exaggeration! If
>> you can help that would be wonderful. I am very new at this so dont know
>> your culture but am willing to learn. We have thousands of agriculture
>> experts and farmers working with us. We could have thousands of coders like
>> you. So, if you can be patient and help me build this we can create a
>> community using the skills you all have helping the poorest people on our
>> planet cope with stresses like locusts and climate change.
>> Fair warning! If you jump in the code won't be pretty and documented. I
>> can incentivize you with some swag :)
>>
>
What sort of swag?

> I am trying to hire Ruby people at Penn State so will have an advert soon.
>>
>
How much budget do you have available? -- H

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Re: [Rails] Locusts in Africa

[Nicholas Schwaderer]

Hi David,

I recently had a need to record live locations/weather readings/health data
submitted by users with an application. Similarly we found that the best
approach for mass users was via a text interface instead of a whole
mobile/web application. It also massively increases access for folks in
regions with limited connectivity etc.

I don't know about Whatsapp, but I know Telegram supports location sharing.
It also has a very user-friendly approach to writing "bots" which can
interact with the user, accept their locations/photos/etc. You can hook
this up to a Ruby on Rails backend to manage the conversation however you
like (or simply accept data). In this sense, you could integrate this 'new'
Rails app with your existing apps, or build this backend into your existing
Rails locust app.

I presented a few talks on this just over a year ago:
https://shrug.org/meetings/shrug-103/
Open source version of my work on this: https://github.com/schwad/mara

Good luck,

Schwad

On Sat, 15 Feb 2020 at 06:30, David Hughes 
wrote:

> Dear Ruby community
>
> I am a scientist at Penn State and the United Nations. We have a Platform
> called PlantVillage that is a public good with a backend built on RoR with
> various apps farmers use around the world to get help. The reason these
> farmers (e.g. in Kenya) would use the tool is that they dont have access to
> human experts who can help them know the problems in their field
> (pests/climate change stress). You can read our blogs here
> https://plantvillage.psu.edu/blogposts
>
> I wrote back in 2018 to this group to ask about getting your help. Many of
> you were very keen on helping. THANKS!!
>
> I didnt follow up as I am not a coder. I pay a team in India to do this.
> So, it was just easier to keep with them. I didnt even know where to start
> in sharing the code on GitHub.
>
> Now in recent weeks Ruby experts at Penn State (who built ScholarSphere
> https://github.com/psu-stewardship/scholarsphere) have looked at our code
> and it is very bad! Rubocop showing errors off the charts and no
> tests/commit.
>
> It needs your help and we are actively trying to make sure we dont have
> any privacy issues so we can open source it.
>
> I am reaching out now as we have an extremely urgent situation though. You
> may have seen the news about Locust swarms in East Africa? They are the
> worse in 75 years
>
> According to the UN, 19 million people are in immediate danger. They are
> at Level 3 (crisis). Since we can expect hotter, drier weather in some
> affected regions in the coming months (low crop outcome) the addition of
> locusts in potentially a famine.
>
> Here is an article today https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-51501832 The
> video is informative
>
> They are mostly in Kenya where control is possible. But we need lots of
> people out there with phone use our app and reporting sitings. Currently,
> they use WhatsApp but since that is private we cannot get the GPS
> coordinates of the locations.
>
> The Indian team I employ built an app. But I am sure it has problems and
> if we have thousands of users it could fail.
>
>
> Here is the apk file of the app
> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nAvTolDEz48mPLtIPO6abumW6KQAM-00/view?usp=sharing
>
> It is super simple: It must do two things
>
>
> 1) Allow users to upload images/videos from which United Nations Staff can
> determine the location and stage of locust swarms
>
> 2) Enable app users to have a free-ranging chat function. There should be
> two chat channels: general (any users of apps) and admin (just select).
>
>
> One of the problems we have is the code base for the locust app is tied to
> the rest of out platform and apps. So, there are security issues if user
> names and passwords etc.
>
> Your coding skills could save lives here: that is not an exaggeration! If
> you can help that would be wonderful. I am very new at this so dont know
> your culture but am willing to learn. We have thousands of agriculture
> experts and farmers working with us. We could have thousands of coders like
> you. So, if you can be patient and help me build this we can create a
> community using the skills you all have helping the poorest people on our
> planet cope with stresses like locusts and climate change.
>
> Fair warning! If you jump in the code won't be pretty and documented. I
> can incentivize you with some swag :)
>
> I am trying to hire Ruby people at Penn State so will have an advert soon.
>
>
> Thanks so much for any help
>
> david
>
>
> On Nov 13, 2018, at 11:22 AM, David Hughes  wrote:
>
> Hi all
> I am a scientist at Penn State University and the United Nations Food and
> Agricultural Organisation. I work to help poor farmers in Africa and
> elsewhere grow more food by combatting pests and diseases.  There are two
> ways we do this: an Android app that runs TensorFlow object detection
> offline inside the food without a web connection (see here
> ). The other way is